Why I Bought an iPad

Why did I buy an Apple iPad tablet computer when I already own a Mac computer and an Apple iPhone?

I bought an iPad so that I can maintain my love of reading books and newspapers now that my vision has been reduced significantly from glaucoma and cataracts.

Sure, I could read the same eBooks using the free Kindle app on my Mac or iPhone, but the thin, light, intimate form factor of the iPad allows me to read or write in the comfort of my bed, or on my sofa, or anywhere my travels take me.

With my vision reduced to 20/70 acuity due to glaucoma and cataracts, I can no longer read normal-sized print books. Therefore, because I love to read, I now read virtually any book I want on the iPad via a three-second download of the e-book version from Kindle Books on Amazon.com and read it on my iPad using the free Kindle app.

I also use my iPad to read my daily subscription to the New York Times, to read and write emails, to surf the Internet, to do my online shopping, and to share our family calendars and contacts with my wife on her iPad Mini and iPod Touch using Apple’s iCloud.

I can watch videos, take pictures, or use Siri voice recognition to transcribe my speech to text for use in an email or a word processing document, or I can tap out what I want to write on the iPad’s virtual keyboard or an external Bluetooth keyboard.

For work and play, I’ve downloaded over 175 of the 1,000,000 available apps onto my iPad, most of them for free or at very low cost, so that now I’m both more efficient and never bored.

With the iPad you don’t have to sit at a desk, or strain to see a screen that’s too far away for you to read. You can hold the iPad as close as you want. It’s very intimate and personal.

And, if God forbid, my eyesight should deteriorate further into complete blindness, I can use the iPad’s Voiceover software to control it using my ears, hands, and voice.